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What's The Lesson Of The Bennett Emails For States That Issue A-F Grades?

August 5, 2013 | 9:04 AM

Former Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Bennett has stepped down as Florida Education Commissioner after the Associated Press released emails indicated his staff changed the letter grades of more than a dozen schools.

The announcement came the day after former state superintendent Tony Bennett resigned his post as Florida Education Commissioner following the release of emails showing his staff changed the letter grades for more than a dozen charter schools during his time in Indiana.

‘Behind These Letter Grades Are A Lot Of Judgment Calls’

Let’s be clear: Petrilli has long supported many of Bennett’s education initiatives. The Fordham Institute even named Bennett its “Education Reform Idol” back in 2011.

Petrilli says, on its face, what Bennett says he did to tweak the letter grades of Christel House Academy and a dozen other charter schools isn’t problematic.

Screenshot / The Florida Channel

A screenshot from Florida's public affairs television channel showing Tony Bennett, former Indiana state superintendent, resigning from Florida's top education post Thursday.

“I think in fact he did exactly what you’d want a public official to do,” Petrilli told StateImpact Wednesday, before Bennett resigned. “He saw a problem with a high stakes accountability system, he saw that there was something strange going on in the algorithm, and he dug in to see how they could fix it.”

Emails obtained by the Associated Press show Bennett and his staff scrambled to change the metrics of the state’s accountability system when it became clear a charter schools run by a prominent Republican donor would receive a C. But even as he resigned as Florida’s Education Commissioner, Bennett defended his decision. He told StateImpact if Christel House didn’t get an A, no one would trust the state’s new accountability system.

That, too, makes sense, writes Andy Rotherham, blogs at Eduwonk and co-founded Bellwether Education Partners, a non-profit organization. Christel House had always scored well on state tests in the past.

“Indiana had an accountability system prior to this,” Rotherham told StateImpact. “It was not necessarily simple enough for parents, which is one of the reasons the A-F grading systems are very appealing.”

Rotherham says it would have behooved Bennett to be more transparent about the changes he had his staff make. But Petrilli says in all likelihood, the former state superintendent made a judgement call.

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“He had spent months (and much political capital) building an A–F accountability system for Indiana’s schools,” Petrilli wrote last week on Fordham’s Education Gadfly blog. “These systems are as much art as science (more akin to baking cookies than designing a computer), and when they tried out the recipe the first time, it flopped.”

‘Accountability Systems Are There To Ensure Kids Are Learning’

But what if designing an accountability system isn’t like baking cookies? What if it’s more like buying a car? Where you might care most about one or two things, such as the gas mileage or safety rating or leather seats?

That’s the analogy Jim Stergois, executive director of the Pioneer Institute, uses to describe Massachusetts’ accountability system. The state is known for its high-performing schools, but instead of issuing letter grades, the state releases all kinds of school-level data — test scores, class sizes, even student-to-computer ratios. Stergois says local media outlets then could create their own school ratings guides.

“It’s like what happens in the car industry when Consumer Reports or Popular Mechanics or these people say, ‘This Ford model is absolutely excellent, this Honda is absolutely excellent,’” says Stergois. “They’ll explain to you how they rated it. I think that’s a far better way for people to get engaged.”

Stergois says the cornerstone of any accountability system is transparency. He says the problem with assigning A-F letter grades to schools is officials can change or adapt the metrics behind closed doors — like what happened in Indiana.

“If you ask parents of kids who are in even failing schools, what they think of their teachers, they will often tell you, ‘My teacher is awesome!’ And the fact is often that teacher isn’t delivering results.”—Jim Stergois, Pioneer Institute

“From the emails, it seems like there were three individuals that were primarily responsible for rejiggering grades given to schools,” says Stergois. “That in itself raises questions about objectivity.”

In total, 13 charter schools saw their letter grades improve as result of Bennett’s staff tinkering with the accountability metrics. But Indiana State Teachers Association President Teresa Meredith wonders if the independent review might reveal other schools that were negatively impacted.

“In the end, the charter who didn’t have such a good grade, got what it needed in terms of the formula to make it look better than it really should have,” she says. “We’ve got to make sure in the new system, that can’t happen. That cannot happen.”

She says Indiana needs to hold off assigning letter grades until it’s clear how many schools were potentially harmed.

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Comments

Karynb9

The DOE admitted that Christel House had only 33% of their 10th graders pass the Algebra ECA. That doesn’t sound like a school that should be predestined to have an A ranking to me. Did grades K-9 at Christel House have scores that would make them look like an A school? Sure. Did other schools in the state happen to get THEIR lowest-scoring grade’s scores thrown out of the formula like Christel House did? Of course not.

Grading schools doesn’t NEED to be an “art” — it’s supposed to be a science. That’s why there are formulas involved, and the intent has always been that the formulas be applied in the same way to every school. No “opinions” are supposed to go into this formula. A school shouldn’t get an A just because “it feels like an A school.” That’s what these grades were supposed to AVOID — people assuming that schools were performing at a high level just because they have the newest technology or the shiniest floors or the most well-behaved kids.

just saying

The problem arrised in these kids were new to the system from public schools so there grades should not be counted toward the charter school till atleast 1 year in charter school

http://sandyhawk.tumblr.com/ Sandra Hawk

I reallly think we ought to be taking real note of the decisions Masschusetts has made. Children are not widgets. What works well for one child, may not work as well for another. Parents are in the best position to know what their child needs to be learning at their best. So a system that gives parents access to the information that is meaningful to them makes sense. It seems like that is what Massachusetts accountability system does.

I don’t know a single parent who finds the A-F system useful. It is really a bummer to hear these quotes from the heads of foundations and think tanks. I’d like to know if their children attend public schools. It would be great if you could interview a couple parents from the schools that got “F” ratings last year here in Bloomington. The parents I know at the so-called “F” schools are happy with their teachers and the programs. They are aware that their schools have highly transient populations with close to 50% turnover and that poverty and transience create tremendous challenges. Last year we saw articles about how the number of homeless students had skyrocketed–I think up to 28 at one school. Do parents think that those grades accurately reflected the work of their kids and those kids teachers? I’d love to see fuller coverage of the way these grades are tied to the socioeconomic status of the families schools serve. The Shanker blog ran an excellent piece summing up that data last year.

Teresa Wardwell Wiley

“Indiana had an accountability system prior to this,” Rotherham told StateImpact. “It was not necessarily simple enough for parents, which is one of the reasons the A-F grading systems are very appealing.” This statement should have been identified as opinion and not fact. No parent ever said they did not understand the previous ranking of schools by PL 221. Parents understood that under the PL221 guidelines a schools ranking was based on many factors including attendance, graduation rate, ISTEP scores, and even using real teachers to teach the subjects of their license. The A to F grading system is a scheme set up to make public schools appear to not be performing as set out in the ALEC document “Indiana Education Reform Package.” http://www.alec.org/model-legislation/indiana-education-reform-package/